- 0.5% fee (p2pool has a default 1% fee to its author which you have to disable if you want to be 0% fees)- PPLNS- 1/2 transaction fees for the miner who solves a block- high availability and resiliency (I won't say it cannot be DDOSed... but a lot of p2pool nodes could be easily).

p2pool.info is best at any time because of it nature!- 0% fee- PPLNS- tx fee for miners- decentralised (ddos impossible)

well, probably a majority of the people that use p2pool set up their own node... if it's using a computer that you usually have off, say, 18 hrs a day, then that's extra electricity costs. even if it's on a 24/7 computer, that's resources used up & higher load

i ran a node locally for a bit on a very good computer (think it was an i7-920 at the time, maybe about 8 months ago)... but my upstream is capped so low that whenever I did anything else w/ my computer, it'd cause orphan issues w/ the local node. i got higher efficiency by just eating the 170ms latency to germany

to find a pool. should have at least one backup, probably two. lower latency isn't always best, check what your DOA rate would be & check the pool's orphan rate. a pool that gets 10% orphans that you have 20ms latency to would probably be lower efficiency for you then a pool that gets 5% orphans w/ 150ms latency (this likely wasn't the case when the shares were 15s apart instead of 30s, but it reduces the importance of low latency)

anyway. i agree, p2pool is the best. outside of that, i'd recommend hhtt and bitminter. possibly eclipsemc too, i haven't checked their fees in 1/2 a year or more though

to find a pool. should have at least one backup, probably two. lower latency isn't always best, check what your DOA rate would be & check the pool's orphan rate. a pool that gets 10% orphans that you have 20ms latency to would probably be lower efficiency for you then a pool that gets 5% orphans w/ 150ms latency (this likely wasn't the case when the shares were 15s apart instead of 30s, but it reduces the importance of low latency)

a few words about latency. there is a perception that 100-200ms latency is batter than 20ms. as it is explained in efficiency thread that because of limiting number of included tx and as well - lower tx fee.

That is mistake! 20ms (lower) IS better then 100ms (higher) latency.

Let's look. It's true that to reduce latency is used limiting of tx number For example we can include only transaction that have 0.0001 and higher tx feethis way we will filter 'transaction dust'what we loose in this case? avarege number ot transaction in block now is about 300-500, so filtering dust we reject about 0.0001*500=0.05Bbtc feeand it will be only if all 500 transactions have less than 0.0001 fee. Practically it hundreds times less.So rejecting about 0.0005 fee each block we get latency 20ms instead of 200ms and theoretical less amount of rejected shares on pool

to find a pool. should have at least one backup, probably two. lower latency isn't always best, check what your DOA rate would be & check the pool's orphan rate. a pool that gets 10% orphans that you have 20ms latency to would probably be lower efficiency for you then a pool that gets 5% orphans w/ 150ms latency (this likely wasn't the case when the shares were 15s apart instead of 30s, but it reduces the importance of low latency)

a few words about latency. there is a perception that 100-200ms latency is batter than 20ms. as it is explained in efficiency thread that because of limiting number of included tx and as well - lower tx fee.

That is mistake! 20ms (lower) IS better then 100ms (higher) latency.

Let's look. It's true that to reduce latency is used limiting of tx number For example we can include only transaction that have 0.0001 and higher tx feethis way we will filter 'transaction dust'what we loose in this case? avarege number ot transaction in block now is about 300-500, so filtering dust we reject about 0.0001*500=0.05Bbtc feeand it will be only if all 500 transactions have less than 0.0001 fee. Practically it hundreds times less.So rejecting about 0.0005 fee each block we get latency 20ms instead of 200ms and theoretical less amount of rejected shares on pool

obviously lower latency is better than higher latency... as in network latency.

bitcoind getblocktemplate latency would cause you to have a higher chance to have an orphan BLOCK, but not really a whole lot else (though generally when you have a high gbt latency as in 0.5s+, your whole damn system is strained). already, 1/2 the time or more, these shares that are being 'punished' end up being the ones that become the main chain.

the problem with having a lot of transactions on a public node that a lot of people use, is that with 5-10 work requests, it can take 100ms to get these all out if you have a 100kb block, even on something like a xeon e3-1270v2. if i was running a private node w/ just myself, i would set maxblocksize to 500000

i said if you choose a p2pool, the # of orphans that p2pool has is the most important thing to look at. the DOA rate is easy to see, run a miner on it for 10 minutes

"82.196.8.44:9333": 3816

so you are running 3816 bytes of transactions atm. i am at 4873 (though I think I'll just go ahead and drop that to 2000 or so)

my latency is average of 3.16ms over the last 24 hours, yours is 7.64ms, so you don't need to lecture me about it. i do this so there is less time between work assignments, not for getblocktemplate stats

Care to elaborate? They're an expensive pool with average features. If reliability is a concern, you can simply set your miner to failover to any number of lower-fee pools giving you the same or better uptime as just mining at one big pool.

Care to elaborate? They're an expensive pool with average features. If reliability is a concern, you can simply set your miner to failover to any number of lower-fee pools giving you the same or better uptime as just mining at one big pool.

Some have probably been there since 2011.. I guess I could understand that. Not sure why someone new would start there though, esp. when you have a whole bunch of quality 1% pools available, if you don't feel like messing with something like p2pool (I think Eligius might be 0 fee too, not sure).

Care to elaborate? They're an expensive pool with average features. If reliability is a concern, you can simply set your miner to failover to any number of lower-fee pools giving you the same or better uptime as just mining at one big pool.

Some have probably been there since 2011.. I guess I could understand that. Not sure why someone new would start there though, esp. when you have a whole bunch of quality 1% pools available, if you don't feel like messing with something like p2pool (I think Eligius might be 0 fee too, not sure).

I think the reason a lot of new miners go to BTC Guild is that the idea that bigger is better appeals. It actually just means less variance in the short term, but over the long term that evens out and a 3% fee over a 1% fee means you will earn 2% less.Others pay the 7.5% fee for PPS so as to totally eliminate luck, or rather I should say, to shift the risk of bad luck onto the pool operator.

Edit eleuthria has pointed out that I forgot to mention that BTC Guild pays orphans whereas 1% pools don't.

Eligius has "Capped PPS with Recent Backpay" which doesn't guarantee full payment, and I personally find that off putting.

Bitminter has been a great pool to use for a long time. The customers are very quick to offer good help and advise in the pool thread on this forum, and Dr Haribo is always willing to go the extra mile to make sure everything runs smoothly.

Care to elaborate? They're an expensive pool with average features. If reliability is a concern, you can simply set your miner to failover to any number of lower-fee pools giving you the same or better uptime as just mining at one big pool.

Some have probably been there since 2011.. I guess I could understand that. Not sure why someone new would start there though, esp. when you have a whole bunch of quality 1% pools available, if you don't feel like messing with something like p2pool (I think Eligius might be 0 fee too, not sure).

I think the reason a lot of new miners go to BTC Guild is that the idea that bigger is better appeals. It actually just means less variance in the short term, but over the long term that evens out and a 3% fee over a 1% fee means you will earn 2% less.

Except there is no 1% fee pool that offers the benefits of BTC Guild that reduce variance even more. IE: BTC Guild pays for orphaned blocks. Bitminter does not (without users paying an extra 1%(or more?)). That's a ~1% effective fee reduction. Now you're looking at a 1% fee difference in exchange for a massive reduction in variance, and an admin whose only source of income depends on making sure the pool is running smoothly 24/7.

Care to elaborate? They're an expensive pool with average features. If reliability is a concern, you can simply set your miner to failover to any number of lower-fee pools giving you the same or better uptime as just mining at one big pool.

Some have probably been there since 2011.. I guess I could understand that. Not sure why someone new would start there though, esp. when you have a whole bunch of quality 1% pools available, if you don't feel like messing with something like p2pool (I think Eligius might be 0 fee too, not sure).

I think the reason a lot of new miners go to BTC Guild is that the idea that bigger is better appeals. It actually just means less variance in the short term, but over the long term that evens out and a 3% fee over a 1% fee means you will earn 2% less.

Except there is no 1% fee pool that offers the benefits of BTC Guild that reduce variance even more. IE: BTC Guild pays for orphaned blocks. Bitminter does not (without users paying an extra 1%(or more?)). That's a ~1% effective fee reduction. Now you're looking at a 1% fee difference in exchange for a massive reduction in variance, and an admin whose only source of income depends on making sure the pool is running smoothly 24/7.

Hey eleuthria, I'm not knocking the Guild, I know it is a very well run pool. I mined there myself for a long time. The way the last round of Ddos attacks were handled was excellent. IMO the number of orphans does not justify paying the optional fee at Bitminter. The point I was really trying to make is that lower fees are more important than lower variance. There is a minimum hash rate to make a pool function effectively, but I personally cannot justify paying extra to reduce variance beyond that as it has no long term impact on income.

Care to elaborate? They're an expensive pool with average features. If reliability is a concern, you can simply set your miner to failover to any number of lower-fee pools giving you the same or better uptime as just mining at one big pool.

Some have probably been there since 2011.. I guess I could understand that. Not sure why someone new would start there though, esp. when you have a whole bunch of quality 1% pools available, if you don't feel like messing with something like p2pool (I think Eligius might be 0 fee too, not sure).

I think the reason a lot of new miners go to BTC Guild is that the idea that bigger is better appeals. It actually just means less variance in the short term, but over the long term that evens out and a 3% fee over a 1% fee means you will earn 2% less.

Except there is no 1% fee pool that offers the benefits of BTC Guild that reduce variance even more. IE: BTC Guild pays for orphaned blocks. Bitminter does not (without users paying an extra 1%(or more?)). That's a ~1% effective fee reduction. Now you're looking at a 1% fee difference in exchange for a massive reduction in variance, and an admin whose only source of income depends on making sure the pool is running smoothly 24/7.

Hey eleuthria, I'm not knocking the Guild, I know it is a very well run pool. I mined there myself for a long time. The way the last round of Ddos attacks were handled was excellent. IMO the number of orphans does not justify paying the optional fee at Bitminter. The point I was really trying to make is that lower fees are more important than lower variance. There is a minimum hash rate to make a pool function effectively, but I personally cannot justify paying extra to reduce variance beyond that as it has no long term impact on income.

That's fine. But making it sound like there is some huge different in earnings is dishonest. It is a *1%* effective difference between Bitminter and BTC Guild, and less variance to boot. Orphaned blocks *do* eat about 1% of your earnings (AKA: Hidden 1% "fee"), and on BTC Guild they are paid.

And while pure BTC earnings are unaffected in long term by variance (within certain limits), USD earnings *can* be impacted. More consistent earnings means you're more readily able to execute market positions with a steady supply of coins rather than being left dry during short term spikes.